All posts tagged ‘computing’

One hundred years ago today, three companies merged to become the Computing Tabulating Recording (CTR) Corporation. At the time, the business manufactured and sold a number of different machines, ranging from time recorders to food slicers. Thirteen years later, CTR had hired a new leader and adopted a new moniker, leading to a century of success and innovation.

Today, International Business Machines — IBM — is an international computer company and a top-10 firm. Benefiting from nine research labs scattered around the globe, “Big Blue” holds more patents than any other U.S. technology company. In 1972, designer Paul Rand gave IBM its visual identity with the 8-bars logo.

The 100-year-old company is celebrating the milestone in style, with a resource-laden website and a new book highlighting the century of innovation. The company released a 13-minute film recapping that storied history year-by-year. The short movie features one hundred people, each presenting a different IBM achievement from the year they were born, from oldest to youngest.

President Thomas Watson got that long list going early on by instilling the slogan “THINK” and signature strong customer service into corporate culture. Over the decades, IBM equipment has powered Social Security, learned to play checkers, facilitated plane reservations, helped land men on the moon, and beat humans at Jeopardy! Watson, the natural-language analytical computer who did the winning, earned a Webby Award for “Person of the Year” on Monday. IBM scientists also invented FORTRAN and put barcodes on inventory.

One of the things IBM did not give the world, however, is the inspiration for the malfunctioning computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL is short for “Heuristic Algorithmic,” and the one-letter offset with IBM is purely coincidental.

In addition to the celebratory reflection on where they’ve been, IBM is also giving back. Since the start of the year, IBMers have donated over 2.5 million hours to 5,000 service projects in 120 countries.

The odds are that, if you don’t already have one, you could use a set of Gunnar Optiks glasses right now. If, like most geeks, you spend some significant portion of your day in front of a computer monitor — whether for work or for play — you’ve been straining your eyes. Ever get a headache from an intense session of programming, writing, or videogaming? Gunnar’s i-AMP lenses may be the answer.

I’ve been wearing eyeglasses every day of my life for more than twenty years, and an uncounted but surely huge amount of that time has been spent in front of a computer. My non-blogger career is as a software engineer, so there literally is no way I can do my job without my eyes on the screen. I am a hard-core skeptic, and I’d tried out so-called “computer” glasses before, so I figured the Gunnar Optiks glasses wouldn’t have much of an effect on me. I was very pleasantly surprised, then, when the set they sent me worked like a charm.

Since work is where I spend the most time staring at a screen, I took my pair of prescription Gunnar glasses with me there. The first and second days I didn’t really notice much of a difference, but mid-afternoon on the third day I suddenly realized that the usual tension in my temples wasn’t there! Even better than that, the background headache I usually get from overhead fluorescent lights hadn’t arrived.

Matt Blum, wearing his Gunnars; photo by Jen Blum.

I don’t want to sound like a commercial, but I really can’t find anything negative to say about these glasses. They’re no more expensive than comparable traditional eyeglasses are, they come in lots of stylish designs, and, most importantly, they deliver on their promise. And they keep innovating, too: Gunnar just announced yesterday at CES that they will be selling 3D glasses starting in Q2 of this year, with prescription ones coming in Q3. I might just get myself a pair of those, because there are so many 3D movies coming out these days, and it’s really annoying trying to put 3D glasses on when you’re already wearing the glasses you need to be able to see anything at all.

And now for the giveaway: Leave a comment on this post giving a ballpark figure of the average amount of time you spend in front of a monitor each day to be entered to win a set of Gunnar Optiks MLG Legend Chrome glasses (pictured at the top of this post). These are not prescription lenses, so are suitable for folks with normal vision or who wear contact lenses, and sell for $99. To be entered, you must leave a comment by 5:00pm EST this Sunday, January 10, 2010.

I’m wearing my Gunnars (Groove style) as I write this, because there’s just no reason not to when I’m in front of a monitor. If you spend a lot of time looking at a screen, the money spent on a set for yourself will be well worth it.